La Haine
When I read that gaguri (who is on a hiatus currently) said he liked the film, I felt a little guilty for having dropped the movie a long time ago and never trying to give it a second chance. The truth is that I couldn’t understand it. I watched it in French, and I had French subtitles to go with it, but I couldn’t get about 50% of those sentences. On top of that, due to the slightly episodic structure of the film, I couldn’t even understand what the conversation was about. So, until the day I finally got my hands on the German DVD of the film, I always kept the film in mind, in the category „films I feel guilty about not having seen them“. (Other movies that are in this category: „The Leopard“, „Vertigo“, „Yi Yi“, „Tystnaden“, „The Children’s Hour“, „Adaptation“, the list goes on and on…)
At the beginning, the film got my attention because it was one of the five recommended movies about Paris in its Lonely Planet (the other four being „À bout de souffle“, „Amélie“, „Last Tango in Paris“ and „Boy Meets Girl“). One year after the riots in the banlieues and without having seen the banlieues myself, I was very interested in the topic. It is only now that my experiences in Paris are over that I have finally seen the movie.
First of all, in many ways the movie is not about Paris, it is more about the antithesis of Paris. When we were in Paris, we saw the Paris of Haussmann, we saw all the touristy parts of Paris, and many of the unknown, even more beautiful parts. There are buildings within Paris that were modern and boring and we called them „banlieue-like“. The only times when I actually went to the banlieue was when I went to Montrouge to go to the Ed and when we went to St-Denis to see the Basilique. We then took the tram back into Paris and got quite a view on the silhouette of the northern banlieues. Now, it is very likely that we have seen the nicer areas, but at least in St-Denis, it struck us as how calm and lively people are. Everyone was on the streets, the shopping streets seemed to had quite a large range of customers – and you pretty much could not see one single caucasian. Thus, my own impression of Paris is entirely different than in „La Haine“, and even my small impression of the banlieues is different. However, I still believe that the movie shows a reality I have never bothered to see when I was in Paris myself.
It is saddening how the real Paris (which is Paris + its banlieue) seems to be so entirely different from the Paris we have seen. On the top of that: If nobody told me this is a 1995 movie, I would have thought that it came out recently. It’s shocking how the banlieues look exactly the same today as in the movie!
Concerning the movie itself, I think that a lot of interesting points have been raised by these two reviews: The first one gives a lot of background information about the production history of the film besides analyzing the style of the film, and the second one sounds much more intellectual and gives an analysis of the storyline in a societal context. These reviews are thus highly recommended!
There were two things that struck me as particularily interesting:
The first one was how the making of the film was compared to the Nouvelle Vague in comparison to the two major movements of French film at that time: Adaptations of historical and „good“ literature, or movies that were mainly extremely good-looking style without substance. „La Haine“ was one of the first movies from the ‚new school‘, with unusual storytelling and cinematography, but especially with a daring, deeper meaning, a mirror of contemporary society. I also really appreciate how „La Haine“ – just like the Nouvelle Vague – was a counter movement in which the movies were actually rather low budget, they were filmed in the streets and with very few actors. Compared to Godard’s Nouvelle Vague films that come to mind (À bout de souffle, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou, Une femme est une femme), I think that „La Haine“ has a rather similar structure: There is one single story, but separated into a multitude of little scenes of episodes that can stand rather independently from each other. You could easily take some scenes out of „La Haine“ and put them onto Youtube for other people’s enjoyment as you can do for „À bout de souffle“, for example.
Enough blabbering; all in all, I am really glad in retrospect that this buy was totally worth it. I am wondering what is on the second DVD of the special edition (I only got the single DVD version). Heh. Now, the only movie left from the Lonely Planet Paris is „Boy Meets Girl“, a film I probably never am going to see due to its complete lack anywhere in the market.